Belle Wong: writer, reader, creativity junkie

Tag Archives: filmmaking

My daughter Hayley is the DoP (Director of Photography) for Gay Mean Girls. It’s a beautiful short film, well worth watching. And when you’re done, you can go to IMDB and rate it!

I’m really excited about the plans for the film—Hayley and Coco (Heyishi Zhang, the director) will be making this into a Web series! Follow Gay Mean Girls on Tumblr to stay in the know about dates and such!

Barely squeezing this post in to make it on time for a Saturday Random post—I’d better type fast!

RUFF 2015

The Ryerson University Film Festival 2015 was held last night and tonight. I attended both nights and wow, such a lot of young talent! Hayley had two films playing, one on each night. They were both amazing, and I’m hoping they’ll be online somewhere soon so I can post the links or the videos themselves here.

Hayley didn’t win for best cinematography, unfortunately, but the film she produced and DoP’d won for best screenplay, so that was nice.

Ten minute workout

Day two of my ten minutes to big changes plan, and so far I’ve managed both the meditation and the Morning Pages. Haven’t had any luck with the workout, though, and I think it’s because I don’t actually have a short ten minute workout handy for first thing in the morning.

A couple of weeks ago, though, I received an issue of the Further newsletter headlined The Ancient Fitness Routine That Transforms You in Ten Minutes a Day. I hadn’t yet decided on my ten minutes a day thing, but I did save the newsletter and I think this might be the thing for me to try. Except I’m not sure about that first part—I get dizzy pretty easily so it will be interesting to see if I can spin around.

Author Hugh Howey also had some good things to say about this workout, which he calls the Five Tibetan Rites.

What is beyond doubt is their efficacy. If you do these every day, you will see results in a week. You will see profound differences in a month. Practitioners claim that these exercises will keep you young, and I’m a believer. They fixed a nagging shoulder injury, and my back has never been stronger.

Sounds pretty good to me. He even made some videos which should be helpful.

Do you know of a ten minute workout I can try? I’d love to add more to my list!

Me: I noticed your green eyeliner in the bathroom. We should probably get you a new one, because this one doesn’t have a cap.

Daughter: That’s all right. I’m not using it.

Me: Good.

Daughter: It’s only for my videos.

Me: Oh. Well, we should get you a new one then. You don’t want to get an eye infection, or you won’t be able to wear your contacts.

Daughter: No, I don’t use it on my eyes. (Points to area around the mouth.) It’s for here.

Ah. Good to know. Which leads me to …

You know you’re living with a filmmaker when:

1. Your intimate belongings show up in a YouTube video, usually occupying a role that renders them unrecognizable. (This is a good thing. Trust me on this one.)

2. You’re playing your favorite smash-em-up game (aka Babo Crash) on your iPhone while on the treadmill, and you get a request to “Please. Mom. Turn down the sound. We’re filming and all we can hear is crash, smash, bang.” Accompanied by an eye roll, a head shake, and a “Geez.” Which is quite effective at making you feel suddenly like you’re the teenager, and not the other way around.

3. Your green bed sheets are hanging around all over the place. Works almost as well as a professional green screen, apparently.

5. Your small portable fan is used to blow up this very weird suit, thereby transforming your daughter’s best friend into a sumo wrestler superhero.

6. You’re sitting in your favorite reading chair, and suddenly outside the window you see someone running back and forth, carrying a tripod, chasing or being chased by someone not carrying a tripod. This keeps up for at least ten minutes. No-one ever tells you why.

7. You’re resigned to strangers on YouTube seeing parts of your house in various states of mess, disarray and incompleteness. You know with certainty that the day you don’t make your bed is the day your bedroom will become a set. (If you’re like me, you’ll still forget to make the bed occasionally.)

8. You have learned never to grab a glass of something that looks enticingly drinkable without first sniffing it, then calling out, “Is this real? Can I drink it?”

9. You have butterscotch pudding on your grocery list because it’s good for those vomiting scenes. But tapioca pudding will work if butterscotch is unavailable.

10. You get so used to strange sounds, yells and screams coming from all over the place, you forget to explain to the person you’re talking to on the phone until he or she exclaims, “What on earth was THAT?”

In fact, you get so used to such strange sounds, one day you hear screams coming from your daughter’s room, and it takes you a full 60 seconds or so to realize the sounds are for real, after which you rush upstairs to find that your daughter has somehow managed to get her finger wedged under her dresser. (She likes to tell this story to top everyone else’s “my parents just don’t care” tales. So now you know. We are that uncaring.)

Yes, I live in a rather weird and wacky world. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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I'm a writer, avid reader, artist-at-heart & book indexer. I blog about writing, books, art, creativity, spirituality, & the power of the imagination. Oh, and I like to write stuff about life in general, too!

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot." - Stephen King

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